My month to six weeks contract work to do philosophy inside the machinery of federal Parliament is drawing to a close.
My very intense experience over the last month of dealing with the conflicts within the political machinery of the state reaffirmed Carl Schmitt's thesis that the essential political distinction is the one between friend and enemy.
That distinction is fundamental and elemental.
Without it the strife, chaos and passion of politics makes little sense. Politics in Parliament is a case of armed autonomous armed groups (political parties) confronting one another across a shifting political battlefield. It is a kind of ongoing civil war.
Within that battle field fear is the key emotion. The fear of being destroyed by one's enemy.
Outside the media prism the conflict within political life looks like mud slinging. But inside the political institutions the conflict has a different existential quality. In the Concept of the Political Carl Schmitt describes it this way:
"Only the actual participants can correctly recognize, understand and judge the concrete situation and settle the extreme cases of conflict. Each participant is in a position to judge whether the adversary intends to negate his opponent's way of life and therefore must be repulsed or fought in order to preserve one's own form of existence." (p. 27)
However, the threat of danger is ever present. As Thomas Hobbes indicates the essence of war iconsists not in the actual fighting but the known disposition to do so. Within Schmitt's enemy concept is the ever present possibility of conflict.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at April 3, 2004 12:04 AM | TrackBack